The New Year is celebrated all over the world with different traditions and Italy is no exception! Check out these 5 Italian traditions for the New Year!
1. Wearing Red Undies For Good Luck
Both men and women wear red underwear on New Year’s Eve to bring luck in the coming year! Red is also the color of fertility for those hoping to conceive in the new year!
2. Old Pots and Pans
To banish previous bad luck, particularly in southern Italy, it’s out with the old and in with the new! Old pots and pans, clothes, and any other old, unwanted items are thrown out the windows. The act is meant to symbolize letting go of unhappiness in preparation for the future.
3. Food For Prosperity
A traditional New Year’s Eve meal is meant to symbolize abundance for the New Year. In Piedmont, rice represents coins so traditionally, dinner consists of risotto. Elsewhere in Italy, common dishes feature lentils, which symbolize wealth, and raisins for good luck.
4. Sweet Treats
For a sweet new year, ancient Romans gave each other jars of dates and figs in honey. Today in Naples, people exchange figs wrapped in laurel leaves for a sweet New Year.
5. Fireworks
Fireworks and lots of noise scare away the bad spirits for the New Year. Like people all over the world, Italians love to celebrate the New Year with fireworks!
Source:
- Featured photo (CTV)
- Photo 1 (Grand Voyage)
- Photo 2 (Pixabay)
- Photo 3 (Wikimedia Commons)
- Photo 4 (Pixabay)
- Photo 5 (Flickr)
